The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter—And How to Make the Most of Them Now

by Meg Jay

Those who can tell a good story about who they are and what they think they want leap over those who can’t.

Storytelling is a crucial skill.

This was a problem because while schools and companies want originality and creativity, they want communication and reasoning even more.

Communication is a precursor to good storytelling.

How does what you did before relate to what you want to do now, and how might that get you to what you want to do next?

These are key universal questions.

“The only completely honest conversations I have are with music.”

There's a bittersweet beauty to this.

the point where she could not bring the pieces of herself together. Cathy feared her shadow would take over one day, at exactly the wrong moment,

This is heartbreaking to read.

Life stories with themes of ruin can trap us. Life stories that are triumphant can transform us.

This is the bottom line.

our attitudes and reactions are the last of our human freedoms.

Freedom is integral to living an intentional life.

We agreed to be content with—and grateful for—what we had.

I believe this is the bottom line at the end of the day.

But a baby is the beginning of something, not the end.

It's really unfortunate that it has become normalized to consider the latter.

There’s this big chunk of time and a whole bunch of stuff needs to happen somehow.”

This isn't any different from writing OKRs.

Most twentysomethings can’t write the last sentence of their lives, but when pressed, they usually can identify things they want in their thirties or forties or sixties—or things they don’t want—and work backward from there.

Concluding Thought